HENRIETTA ROEDER is a director of Practise Room, which she co-runs with Luke Hannam, drawing on her previous experience as a senior lecturer at the University for the Creative Arts. Her work can be seen at the Lido Stores Gallery and in various Soho Houses. And currently with Gallery Hole, Modern Problems, Darsham Suffolk.
For Henrietta, painting is an exploration of materiality, its substance, its histories, and its ability to speak within the vast and sometimes chaotic continuum of art history. Her work investigates the human condition, the felt moment, and the universal language of emotion as expressed through paint.
Painting becomes her companion in this inquiry. Oils, gouache, acrylics, whatever occupies her studio, carry their own material narratives while insisting on the urgency of the present. The act of painting can be tender or resistant, pulling her under like a swamp or pushing her outward when she grows too certain. It is both obedience and rebellion, an ebb and flow where. Instagram @henriettaroeder
MELANIE RUSSELL creates watercolours and oil paintings which capture fleeting moments of botanical beauty in loose lines full of energy, mimicking the very spring that nature relies on to burst into bloom. Russell’s works are playful and experimental as well as quiet and sensitive, dancing between representation and abstraction.
Melanie Russell graduated with an MFA in Fine Art from Slade School of Fine Art 2004 and has been based in South London for over 20 years. Recent exhibitions include ‘Watercolour Now’, Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, ‘Lido Open 2025’, The Lido Stores, Margate, ‘Pearlescent’, Handbag Factory, London and ‘Jerwood Contemporary Painters’ touring exhibition across the UK. Russell was invited for a residency with Marlborough College, Wiltshire in 2006 and created a public commission for the Weymouth Hoardings Project alongside Dorset County Council in 2010. She regularly hosts drawing workshops. Instagram @melaniejrussell
